Schafer gives a concise overview of the static equilibrium properties of polymer solutions. In the first part diagrammatic perturbation theory is derived from scratch. The second part illustrates the basic ideas of the renormalization group (RG). The crucial role of dilation invariance is stressed. The more efficient method of dimensional regularization and minimal subtractions is worked out in part three. The fourth part contains a unified evaluation of the theory to the one loop level. All the important experimental quantities are discussed in detail, and the results are compared extensively to experiment. Empirical methods of data analysis are critically discussed. The final (fifth) part is devoted to extensions of theory. The first three parts of this book may serve as the basis of a course. Parts four and five are hoped to be useful for detailed quantitative evaluations of experiments.

In This Remarkable Treatise, Professor Schafer shares his conclusions from a lifelong search for evidence -- from quantum science -- of the existence of a transcendent part of physical reality. With a view as wide as the cosmos and as infinitesimal as the electron, he combines disciplinary thought from science, philosophy, religion, and ethics to address the educated generalist and layman with a profound look at existence.

When modern science adopted objectivity and experimental testing as operational principles, the ensuing advances in the physical sciences first clashed with, and then destroyed, the world view of the ruling religious mythologies. A general disorientation resulted and a schism evolved in society, disconnecting the world of facts from the world of values. In a disastrous way the covenant which all religious mythologies claimed existed between humanity and nature was broken, and it seemed to many that life itself was rendered meaningless in the process.

However, twentieth-century science has discovered -- in quantum phenomena -- a part of physical reality which, in contrast to the mechanical world of classical science, has all the characteristics of a transcendent reality Now the foundation of the material world is discovered to be nonmaterial, the constituents of real things are found to be not real in the same way as the things that they make, and non-local, faster-than-light influences are found to pervade a universe whose nature is mindlike.

Braving controversy, Professor Schafer concludes that the discovery of the phenomena of quantum mechanics has established a new covenant -- between the human mind and the mindlike background of the universe -- one thatprovides a home again to the homeless and meaning to seemingly pointless life. In this new understanding of the world, the universe must be assumed to have a moral as well as a physical order, and facts and values derive, again, from a single source.